"The Flowers" is not even two pages long, and so Walker's narrative is correspondingly dense with significance. To begin with narration, there is an abrupt shift in style at the point when Myop discovers the body. Before this event, the narrative reflects the excited tone of childhood pleasure, describing Myop's gaze flitting from place to place, revelling in all that she sees.

When she stands on the skull, the narrative shifts to a very matter-of-fact description of Myop's curiosity and her unearthing of the skeleton. Through the shockingly incongruous description of the noose as blending "benignly" into the soil, Walker highlights the horror of Myop's discovery that the man has been lynched, which ends both a carefree day and an innocently curious childhood. Perhaps in her choice of a old plowline for a noose, Walker also implies that African Americans have been reduced to beasts of burden and...